Humanities and Social Sciences - Ways of Assessing
The Ways of assessing also complements the principles of assessment contained in the Western Australian Curriculum and Assessment Outline . The assessment principles, reflective questions and assessment snapshots, available on the Authority’s website, support teachers in reflecting on their own assessment practice in relation to each of the assessment principles. Here teachers will find:
- background information for each principle
- reflective questions
- guidance for addressing the principle within their own assessment practice.
Refer to the Western Australian Curriculum and Assessment Outline for further guidance on assessment principles, practices and phases of schooling.
Assessment, both formative and summative, is an integral part of teaching and learning. Assessment should arise naturally out of the learning experiences provided to students. In addition, assessment should provide regular opportunities for teachers to reflect on student achievement and progress. The key to selecting the most appropriate assessment is in the answers to several reflective questions. For example:
- Is assessment an integral part of your teaching and learning cycle?
- How do you use your observations of students (during the course of classroom activities, in assignments and in tests) to determine how learning can be improved?
- Is the assessment educative?
- How do you identify students’ misconceptions or gaps in their learning?
- How do you identify the next skill or understanding a student, or group of students, needs to learn?
- How do you use assessment to inform your programming and lesson planning?
- Is the assessment fair?
- Do your assessment practices cater for the diverse needs of your students? Are they inclusive, accessible to all students and free of bias?
- Do some students require a differentiated assessment task in order to fully demonstrate their understandings and/or skills?
- Is the assessment designed to meet a specific purpose?
- Do your assessments have a clear purpose?
- How do you ensure your students are clear on what aspects of learning are being assessed?
- How can you be sure your assessment tasks are reliable, measure what they intend to and provide accurate information about each student?
- Do your assessments lead to informative reporting?
- What range of evidence do you draw on when you report student performance and evaluate your teaching?
- How do your assessments lead to school-wide evaluation processes?
- How do you work with colleagues to evaluate student achievement data and how does this work inform your teaching?
Refer to the Judging Standards tool in the Western Australian Curriculum and Assessment Outline when reporting against the Achievement standard; giving assessment feedback; or explaining the differences between one student’s achievement and another’s.
In Humanities and Social Sciences, assessment tasks typically address the syllabus content in interconnected ways within relevant contexts that are meaningful to students. The following accordions provide examples of assessment strategies which can enable teachers to gather a broad range of evidence for assessment in Humanities and Social Sciences.
Ongoing and first-hand observations of student learning, documented by the teacher (can be conducted both informally and formally). Teachers may observe a range of oral, written or multimodal tasks to inform their assessments.
Teachers can observe students through video or audio recordings of activities, such as role-plays, performances, speeches, text reading, play-based learning or debates.
Collaborative or cooperative activities that provide opportunities for individual and peer-learning. During group work, teachers should stop at key points to check individual student understanding. Group activities give teachers opportunities to observe students’ understandings, cognitive skills (such as analysing or evaluating information) and interaction skills.
The demonstration of learning through activities, such as virtual and actual fieldwork; community service programs, including fundraising; creating models; and product design and development.
These may include verbal questioning, multiple-choice, short answer responses or open-ended questions that require extended responses.
This includes short and extended written tasks. These may take the form of short responses, such as sentence or paragraph answers. Extended responses may include essays, information reports or imaginative texts, such as narratives and journal entries.
Students conduct investigations in which they may develop questions; gather, analyse and evaluate information; communicate on findings; and reflect upon conclusions.
The demonstration of learning through making connections, showing relationships and concept mapping of student knowledge.
The demonstration of learning through maps, tables, graphs, diagrams, posters, infographics, brochures, photographs and digital recording.
The demonstration of learning in practical performance, role-play, speeches, simulations, debates, podcasts and structured discussions.
Discussions or interviews with students that are conducted either face-to-face or via audio and digital recordings.
Collections of student work that provide long-term documentation of student progress and achievement. Portfolios may be subject area specific or contain a range of work undertaken by students.
The self-reflection of achievement and progression towards goals or criteria allows for metacognitive thinking about their learning and personal reflection upon their strengths and weaknesses. Journals or commentary entries provide personal accounts of student responses to learning activities, experiences and understandings.
Peers or a group of peers provide evaluative feedback on performance or activity.